I am an historian of contemporary Germany with a diverse range of research interests from transnational histories of sexuality, everyday life and visual culture to the history of populism and authoritarianism, especially as it evolves across platforms in social media and memory. I have published books and articles about same-sex sexuality in post-1945 Germany, memory activism in social media, and history and photography. My second book, Queer Life After Fascism (Duke University Press 2023), takes up the question of respectability politics in queer and trans* organizing, art, and remembrance in the late 20th and 21st century Germany and argues for kinship as a category of historical analysis. My collaboratively written monograph Holocaust Memory in the Digital Mediascape, written together with Meghan Lundrigan and Erica Fagen, (Bloomsbury 2023) explores how everyday people make sense of the crime of genocide and the challenges digital sources pose to historians. I am currently writing a transnational study of erotic photography during the Sexual Revolution, a short history of drag, and finishing research on online hate and the weaponization of history in social media.

I was one of the organizers of the Holocaust Education Foundation's bi-annual Lessons and Legacies conference, am a series editor of Bloomsbury UK's Modern German History series, member of the Circle of Friends of the Schwules Museum* Berlin, and advisory board member of the Berlin Program for European and German Studies with the Free University of Berlin. I also sit on the advisory boards of German History, German Politics and Society, and de Gruyter's new book series Transnational Queer Histories. Alongside my academic writing, I undertake collaborative digital projects like the New Fascism Syllabus (www.NewFascismSyllabus.com) and the German Studies Collaboratory (www.GermanStudiesCollaboratory.org). 

My research has been supported by a variety of funding bodies including the Humboldt Foundation, the German Foreign Office and Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Ottawa, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Social Science Research Council (US), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German Historical Institute, the Humboldt University of Berlin, the Berlin Program of the Free University of Berlin, Sciences Po and the Fondation Maison de Sciences de l'Homme. My writing has appeared in The Washington PostThe Guardian, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and The Conversation. In 2026, I will give the George Mosse Lectures in History at Madison Wisconsin.